2010 03 10

White House Starts Spreading the Tweets

#wanttospinWHreporters? If you're PressSec -- White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' username on Twitter -- you join the powerful social media platform and push your message across the Internet, 140 characters at a time. Blending behind-the-scenes nuggets with a defense of President Barack Obama's record, White House and administration officials increasingly are communicating through Twitter. The popular social network is operating as a Web-based clearinghouse for public statements on weighty subjects (the federal budget) and the mundane (personal grocery lists). It's similar to a bulletin board where anyone can post short notes and users cull the pieces they see by choosing to "follow" individuals' account. Forget press releases. Gibbs and his deputy, Bill Burton, are now sharing news in Twitter messages. So far 35,000 people have signed up to follow Gibbs and more than 6,000 are tracking Burton. Those two officials have a ways to go to catch actor Ashton Kutcher and his 4.6 million followers. "Wow unreal game... POTUS watched OT in his office right off the Oval Office -- all of us are so proud of our great team," Gibbs tweeted during the men's Olympic hockey finals last Sunday, when the Americans lost the gold medal game to Canada in overtime. POTUS, of course, is the acronym for president of the United States. Burton offered a midgame, inside-the-Beltway joke: "Tied! White House response, on bgnd, from a low- to midlevel administration official: USA! USA! USA!" (He was referring to a favorite administration request when talking to the press "on background" means the official won't be identified publicly.) After the U.S. loss, Burton noted that America still led the overall medal race. These are hardly the pronouncements one expects from the president's top spokesmen. But as Obama's team continues an online strategy set in place during the campaign and imported to Pennsylvania Avenue, it seems only...